Fear of challenges

I’ve been noticing this somewhat, recently, but an incident today crystallized it.

When did people become afraid of challenges?

My daughter wanted to run Blood Furnace with her alt (62 Rogue). She picked up a pug (I know) of levels 62-65, and lacked only a tank. Or so she thought. What the REST of the group thought they needed was a level 70. A babysitter. And when no level 70’s answered the call, and the rogue wanted to bring in a level 64 warrior tank – the rest of the party bailed. “No 70, this won’t work, I’m not going to waste my time…”

As I said, I’ve begun noticing this over the past couple of months. Every instance, some players seem to want a babysitter. Someone for whom the instance is a walkthrough. Heaven forfend that they have to WORK – to be CHALLENGED….

What most concerns me is… what happens when they reach the level 70 instances? The heroics, or Kara? How long will it take the player to learn the control and push and reaction to the “oh crap” that they SHOULD have learned in levels 1-69? How many wipes at THIS level will I have to endure – where repairing my cloth armor takes as much gold as what I used to see the tank needing at level 60-65?

I can answer that, actually, because I’ve already been there a couple of times. I’ll see a LOT of wipes. Of “oops”. Of … of mages panicing and running AWAY from tank and healer. Of hunters feigning death right next to the healer. Of healers dropping their group assignment to throw some things on the main tank — and seeing half the party die. Of tanks who can’t handle more than two mobs.

Challenge yourself, and when the rough runs begin it won’t be YOU the officers are discussing in chat. Ask for a babysitter all the way up and, well, don’t be surprised when you never seem to be the one invited for the runs at the top.

Great googly moogly. I remembers tanking Blood Furnace with some guildies at 62, and I weren’t even protection specced then. Weren’t easy, but I got the job done and maybe learned a thing or two. It’d be easy as choppin’ bunnies now, but I wonders if yer daughter’s pug would go “Never minds – his boots is greens.” /shakesheadinamazementification

Once there is an abundance of end-level players, people are afraid of runs that aren’t a “sure thing”. Back in TBC beta and just after release players would be all over an instance at the intended level… but once the 70’s became steady supply they’d rather not do the instance if they don’t have that “insurance”. I agree, it’s damn sad. But the same happened before the expansion too. I remember people being deathly afraid to take a 58 into Scholo… half because they think that the slightly larger aggro radius would aggro the entire instance, and half because they’re jerks who would rather find a friend who in 70 to take, even if that person didn’t really want to go.

I have nothing against having a “babysitter” but it’s just asinine to flat out leave a group if one’s not there. Wipes aren’t expensive, why fear them? If crap goes bad too much, sure, quit, but give it a chance first…. you might be surprised what not-70-yet players can pull off.

I had a little wake up call on Christmas running Ramparts with my little 60 shadow priest Daxie. I was reluctant to be main healer due to my spec and the fact that it was an appropriate level group. In short, I wanted an Easy button.

I reluctantly decided to go despite the gut instinct that it was a bunch of kids that made up the rest of the group. And sure enough, they had some Halo/FPS tendencies. But, after calming them down and reinforcing the fact that I was specced shadow (so my heals weren’t as effective as a Holy specced), I encouraged them by saying that we could do this (instance).

From that point on, the group waited for marking, followed the kill order, and suffered no wipes up to the 2nd boss. That’s right, we DIDN’T wipe on the hall with the 4 casters + 1 melee pull.

We ended up wiping once on the 2nd boss and 2-3 times on the last boss, before the MT had to go, and the other tank left as well. We brought in a guildie (lvl 70) and 4 manned it. Yes, we hit the easy button for the last boss, but the time before that was the real learning experience!

And that’s the way it should be, Dax. No shame in bringing in a heavy hitter when the alternative is to leave the instance unfinished (at least, not to my way of thinking; others may believe differently).

I have a few Alts that I am slowly bringing up and I would love to do SM (or whatever) with a group in the same level as me. It would be nice to run with Guildies on Alts but that never seems to work out. When I do answer an LFG and get a group it seems that it is the same bunch of nit wit Ninjas that were around when I started my first Toon.
So ya I do call on a friend that has Alts and do trade runs with them. I dont get a group I just stand back and watch the carnage. Is this the right thing to do? Prolly not but I can’t stand the heartache of trying to teach people how to work together.

Hmm… maybe that is why I haven’t been able to find a tank for my furnace run as of late.

However, my last BF run, we did not wipe. I was the highest lvl in the group. Level 64 Disc+Shadow Priest. Our tank was a guildie druid dps build at level 61. He turned out to be a great tank. Had another guildie rogue at lvl 64, a lvl 61 shaman (enhancement) and a lvl 62? hunter. We mark and followed the kill order. There were some confusion in the beginning but once we settled down, it was fun as the game supposed to be. Not even a challenge. Relax and enjoy the game. No need to rush to level 70 just yet.

I have only once joined a group that had a much higher level player. An hour banging on various Kurzen minions in STV while trying to find help for my L34 pali had become frustrating. An L60 mage with three lower level players in tow invited me to join the group. I did so. The mage then single-handedly blew away every mob in the tunnel complex. I found this extremely distasteful. I don’t want handouts. I now either leave or refuse to join groups with baby sitters.

When my L59 NElf huntress arrived at Honor Hold and went to work on demonic sappers I was thrilled to get my first Netherweave drops to advance my first aid. I ground the sappers with a vengeance. It was a very easy farming task. On returning to Honor Hold sometime later after completing one of the newbie quests I observed an L70 leading an L60 out of the sappers’ tunnel. I was appalled. How spineless and incompetent can you get?

For me, having a high level player solo an instance or quest while towing a lower level player along to gather unearned loot is the moral equivalent of shoplifting. It certainly accounts for much of the gross incompetence demonstrated by a large percentage of L60+ players. Fat heads with phat lootz.

Even the level 70 isn’t always an “easy” button. I was in the LFG queue for Ramparts on my 62 Fury/Arms warrior, willing to tank and indeed that is what I was called to do. The group consisted of 60 Holy Priest, 70 Holy Priest, 60 Rogue, 62 Hunter and myself. I had never been there so I asked for them to mark/explain. The 60 Holy Priest was “an expert” at the instance and thus he ran the markings, but he was slow as molasses and he marked static groups for pulls right next to a patrol that hadn’t been killed yet. Add to that the Hunter never retraping or staying on the kill target. So we wiped quite a few times leading up to the first boss. Right before that boss our 60 Priest suddenly hearthed out without saying anything and his guildie (the hunter) is the new group leader and adds a 61 Rogue, even after asking him what happened the group got no explination.

It was around this time that I realized this 70 Holy Priest (who should be able to heal this place in all greens or less) just didn’t know what they were doing. We wiped on the first boss (luckily killing the boss just wiping on the adds) and then we wiped on the rampart between the last bosses. This group was slow, very slow and just hard to control anything with.

You would think that with a non prot tank they would try and work more as a team but even the Holy Priest didn’t know how to heal properly as evidenced by the fact that I got little more then a couple renews on the Dragon Boss and I bit the dust while he was still at 20%, how does a level 70 Priest of any spec let a warrior of any spec die to that boss when the rest of the group is not taking much if any damage at all? I just didn’t get it at all.

Personally I like running things undergeared or not correctly specced just for the challenge of it too. Also there was always the timed Baron runs in Strat that my guild ran where we tried to clear it out as fast as possible, we even had a race going with another guild on who could post the fastest time (us in partial MC gear them in MC and partial BWL at the time).

Challenges are what this game is all about, I don’t want “easy” mode for anything. Like when my Deadmines group broke apart I resisted being run through the place and instead used my warrior to run the other two through. Then one of them switched and ran me through after much convincing on their part. This was when I found out that DM was a challenge for this Paladin. She would run from the first room all the way to the first boss collecting everything in her path and then AOEing them down (as Holy Spec too so no Sanc Bless just Consecrate and Ret Aura). Then when we hit the boat she pulled the entire ship at once, I mean once Smite was dead she ran around up to aggro VC then dropped down and aggroed Cookie and brought them all to the ramp next to Smite and took everything down at once. Challenges are fun even if it is in Deadmines you have to find a way to make it interesting.

I agree alot more players are always looking for easy runs – Be it Dead Mines, or Underbog. A couple of 70’s in the mix = a sure sucess. Yeah right.
I got run through Gnomer once by a 70 warrior who was friends with my questing partner at the time in RL – and I got bored. I know people who have never Pugged a real run – always asking Guildys or friends – Can you run me through “I need this item ” or even now im finding there are a few speed levelers that just want to hit 40 or 70 with as minimal effort and time on their part. Firstly I’d like to say I think I know my Shadow Priest well. I also like to say that because I’ve Pugged it – or grouped at the right levels, I got to understand how other toons and people play – strategies when ur missing a class – tricks and failings. Meeting far too many people who don’t have a raid required skill toolbarred. 1st thought is EBAY – but then they explain, they never used it. They never learned their class well.

Being 70 and getting better geared is great! – You feel all powerful, and the last thing I want to do is do babysitting run I detest doing Easy runs.

About…

I've experience with many priests of many races and specs on several servers. The more I play, the more I realize how much I do not yet know. This is a share of some of what I have learned.
My main these days is Zingiber on the Undermine server.